Weiss' film career started already in the Nazi era, with the 1937 Sherlock Holmes inspired movie Die Graue Dame (The Gray Lady), and had lasted for almost fifty years.[2] After the Second World War he returned to acting on screen, working with the East German studio DEFA and with the television producers DFF. He appeared in more than fifty independent GDR productions and in co-productions with other Eastern Bloc countries, such as the epic movies Ernst Thaelmann, Karl Liebknecht and Liberation.[3] He retired in 1984.[4] Weiss retired at 1987, making his last appearance on stage in the Berlin Ensemble on 25 October that year.[5]